Keep heat on Russia

The international community needs to consider tougher sanctions on a recalcitrant Russia as it continues to deny — despite what investigators call unequivocal evidence — any role in the July 2014 downing by missile of Malaysia Airlines 17. On Thursday, an international team of investigators announced they are convinced Russia’s 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade was involved in bringing down the commercial airliner, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

The joint investigative team, which includes officials from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine, said they have ample video and photographic evidence to show the unit crossed into pro-Russian separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine before the attack and then hastily returned to Russia after the incident.

The JIT had previously announced, in 2016, that they’d concluded the plane, en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, had been hit by a Russian-made Buk missile.

What’s still unclear, investigators say now, is exactly who fired the missile and why. That will be the focus of what is the final stage of their investigation, a JIT spokesperson said Thursday.

As usual, Russian officials are disputing the allegations, claiming their missile units never crossed the border.

But it’s become increasingly difficult to believe these inevitable Russian denials, coming, as they do, despite tremendous evidence to the contrary.

For example, Valdimir Putin’s government improbably claimed to have no involvement in the March poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter with a Soviet-era nerve agent in Salisbury, England. It has consistently denied orchestrating a state-run doping program for athletes, despite overwhelming evidence that led to the International Olympic Committee excluding Russia as a participating nation from the recent Winter Games in South Korea. Russia has shamefully used its veto at the United Nations Security Council to provide cover for Syria’s Bashar Assad, allowing his military forces to use chemical weapons on his own citizens. It’s ignored international law to forcibly seize territory — the Crimea — from its neighbour, Ukraine.

In July 2015, Russia faced widespread condemnation for using its UN veto to block the establishment of an international tribunal to try those responsible for the MH17 disaster. They were the only country on the 15-member Security Council to oppose the motion, though China, Venezuela and Angola abstained. At this point, the evidence in the case strongly points to Russian involvement, either by supplying missiles and a launcher to pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine or, perhaps less likely, being directly responsible for firing on the Malaysia Airlines jet. The Netherlands — which had 189 nationals aboard MH17 — has indicated they will prosecute based on the investigation’s findings.

If Russia’s culpability is once again confirmed in the JIT’s final report, Canada and others in the international community must be prepared to further penalize Russia for both ignoring international rules of law and the tenets of civilized co-existence, by imposing new sanctions that will get Putin’s attention.